Introduction

We are writing this introduction just as COP 26 is wrapping up and the world (and GEP community) are assessing the work ahead to turn pledges and promises into action. The current issue includes investigations on a range of topics that inform the very agendas and politics that are underway and needed. The issue begins with a forum on the Paris Agreement, the unquestioned center of gravity for the global response to climate change even while many question its effectiveness in the aftermath of Glasgow. In “The Paris Agreement as Analogy in Global Environmental Politics,” Nicholas Chan explores how it has come to dominate the way the international community imagines and structures global environmental cooperation. He details the discursive and institutional “gravitational pull” of Paris, but also warns against the potentially problematic effects of the powerful Paris analogy, if applied too broadly to diverse problems in environmental politics. A second forum by Olúfé.mi Táíwò and Shuchi Talati, “Who Are the Engineers? Solar Geoengineering Research and Justice,” contributes to the growing body of work on the politics of solar geoengineering. In response to calls to abandon solar geoengineering research that range from environmental impacts to Northern dominance of the field itself, Táíwò and Talati argue instead for a more inclusive framework that is sensitive to concerns of global injustice and inequality. The forum provides concrete suggestions for supporting more inclusive research and governance, including bolstering alternative research programs to fund and build capacity of researchers and policymakers from the Global South. The research articles begin with a cross-issue exploration of global environmental negotiations. In “Design Trade-Offs Under Power Asymmetry: COPs and Flexibility Clauses,” Jean-Frédéric Morin, Benjamin Tremblay-Auger, and Claire Peacock explore how states navigate power asymmetries in environmental negotiations. They argue that the adoption of flexibility clauses helps powerful states signal their commitment to not unduly influence the work of COPs by providing weaker states with insurance against abuse of power differentials. They find support for this argument through an analysis of a database of over 2,000 international environmental agreements.